Michigan, Art, and Music

My departure from Memphis was very time compacted. I arrived in South Bend, IN at around 3:30am and crawled into bed with my sister. Sharing a bed is a sort bonding time for us because we sleep talk to each other. I slept about 7 hours and said goodbye to my sister while we were fully awake before her departure to New York and to their German exchange student before she went home. Then I showered and headed out to a friend's wedding in St. Joseph, Michigan that began at 2pm. As you can tell from the photo below, I am not anticipating my own wedding anytime soon.

At 4pm, my official journey to Twin Lake, Michigan began. The maid of honor was letting me stay with her. So she gave me a key, and I was on my way! I arrived at her apartment a little before 6pm and discovered I was still an hour from the location of the training that started at 7pm that night. Please don't ask me how fast I drove to make it there in time.

The location itself was very different from my previous week because it was in a literal campsite about a half mile from the main parking. The weather was nice and it's a pretty beautiful camp, so I enjoyed my walks to and from the car. Except for the morning I got lost while it was raining with enough force to rinse a tattoo off someone's body. I made quite an entrance into the masterclass lesson with my hair and t-shirt fully soaked through.

Rebecca Sandrock, my instructor was raised in Japan from the age of two and was instructed under the direction of Dr. Suzuki himself, so she was very informative with knowledge from the primary source. I am glad to have had training from her to compare her teaching to others who have mainly learned from secondary sources who brought the method from Japan to America. These secondary source teachers have learned from musicians who have refined the method, which is good, but some of what Dr. Suzuki intended to teach has been lost in the process. So I am glad to have had the opportunity to be instructed by Rebecca to better understand the teacher and man that Dr. Shinichi Suzuki was.

I was staying with my friend in Wyoming, Michigan (just south of Grand Rapids), about an hour from the camp. Therefore, I had to factor 1.5 hours of driving time each way. This means that I had to leave at 7am and arrived back at my friend's apartment around 10pm every night. It was a very exhausting few days!! Thankfully, I did not have much homework this time. On my last night, we finished early enough for me to go into Grand Rapids for dinner with my friend and her roommate.

This is what I discovered was less than five hours from my home of eighteen years....

A NATIONAL ART CONTEST FESTIVAL!!!!!!!!!! Grand Rapids hosts an art contest each fall that uses city-wide venues that people can view free of charge for 2.5 weeks. The particular art piece pictured above won recently and is still plastered on the side of the business wall. I enjoyed my short visit there, and am planning on gathering from college friends to go back to visit over a weekend during the festival this fall.